US government sends $1 billion of seized Bitfinex bitcoin to unlabeled wallets

A transfer of seized coins to unlabeled addresses may be nothing more than custody housekeeping. CoinDesk took that view after finding no exchange deposit on the receiving side ^[2]. It may also be staging. In July about $288 million in seized bitcoin and ether reached Coinbase Prime through fresh intermediary wallets ^[3], so a new address can also be the first stop on a route that ends at a broker. And even an arrival at Coinbase Prime would prove little, because the platform also holds coins in custody ^[7].

I think the housekeeping reading fits this batch. The March 2025 order sends forfeited bitcoin to a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and says it should not be sold ^[4], and a move with no exchange leg is consistent with that. The July route is the counter-case. It would be confirmed if coins from either of the two receiving addresses ^[1] landed at an exchange deposit address. The US Marshals and the Justice Department did not immediately respond when Cointelegraph asked about the Coinbase Prime transfers ^[9].

Any selling would sit in the Coinbase Prime leg, or rather in the bitcoin part of it. CoinDesk's figures for that leg add up to $383 million, of which $119 million was USDT ^[16]. That leaves about $264 million in bitcoin ^[12]. Cointelegraph put the earlier transfers at $770 million in BTC ^[14], nearly three times as much ^[21]. CoinDesk separately reported more than $100 million in BTC and BNB moving in a similar way ^[8].

At the transfer's own valuation, bitcoin is priced at about $82,300 a coin: $1.01 billion divided by 12,267 BTC ^[10]. That is close to the roughly $82,500 implied by the 3,200 BTC sent to Coinbase Prime ^[18]. The batch is about a tenth of the 119,756 BTC stolen from Bitfinex in 2016 ^[11]. Estimates cited by Cointelegraph put 328,372 BTC in government hands as of 2026 ^[15], and this move is about 3.7% of that stock ^[19].